Succeeding With the Succession Planting

By Sarah Briggs | Published July 1, 2010

Well I’m happy to report (belatedly) that the bean tunnel is up and the flowers are beginning to appear on my french beans and runner beans so can’t wait to start seeing little beans forming. The peas however have not ended up being part of the tunnel, but are in the main bed with some twiggy branches as supports which with further consideration, we felt would be better for them and gives us easier access to more of the main vegetable bed too so winners all around.

I’ve just picked up where I left off yesterday evening by catching up with some succession planting. Last night saw two troughs that had held my last two crops of raddishes replanted with seeds; one with more round red raddishes and the other with spring onions. Hopefully this tub of spring onions will be more successful that my other trough which although it has some good strong onions at one end, has been very disappointing in terms of the seeds I planted to fill the rest of the tub. I put it down to a bad experience with some supposedly more environmentally friendly compost but that is a story for another time!

Today’s plantings should give me three tubs of carrots, planted from Nantes Frubund seeds which should provide a fast cropping bunch of carrots. Sadly whenever trying carrots until now, I’ve not had much luck, what with slugs invading the tops of the last crop we tried at the allotment, and the same troublesome compost proving to be better at water logging my little seedlings that were looking so promising when we had a few weeks of rain a couple of months back. But I’m not deterred… I WILL succeed with carrots!

As well as carrot seeds, I have also filled a sectioned seed tray with my next selection of brassicas – 12 pockets of summer cabbages, Derby Day, 6 of Cos lettuce and 6 with round lettuce, and I can say that my lettuces are looking lovely planted out in the main bed, and happily there are varying sizes so I should hopefully be able to keep a good supply going through the summer which is certainly one up on last year!

My four romanesco plants are now in the main bed too, so will hopefully start to spread their roots through the ground and start bulking out, and I can report that my courgette plants in the old blanket basket are looking extremely happy with their ball courgette neighbours. In addition, strong healthy plants have come from my purple sprouting brocolli seedlings, and the broad bean plants are moving from pretty flowers to 3 and 4 inch long pods adorning their stems, so I am beginning to feel really quite proud of the main vegetable bed, especially considering it was begun quite late on.

The next job, probably one for the weekend, is to continue clearing the second veg bed as the only part of this currently available for planting is where the bean tunnel has been erected. That should then give space for planting out of globe artichokes, pumpkins, beetroot, gourds, watermelons and the main brassica crop. An exciting month ahead now I think as the fruit and veg crops begin to mature!